Report 700
Report #700 Skillset: Harmonics Skill: Spire Org: Institute Status: Rejected Oct 2011 Furies' Decision: We are putting this on hold. While we are not adverse to the general idea, we have issues with some of the proposed solutions and would like time to review and adjust. We also note the huge glut on gems/flesh justifies a much, much higher cost. Problem: Currently spires are more of a burden to the caster than they are a resource. They will only ressurect the caster if they die in Continuum, and it costs 25% power in order to use there and it happens automatically regardless of if you want it to happen. It generates very small amount of power per month based on the amount of power you have in it (about 2% at 50% power). It will temporarily buff your vitals to double within a one room range, but the health generated from this disappears immediately upon leaving the range. Meaning that if you happen to walk through the range of your spire(which is required to do one of our power quests) any sipping, sparkleberry, or scroll uses are simply wasted as your health drops back down when you leave now. Spires are a burden that I -never- advise anyone in my guild to learn under any circumstances. Comparatively, the skills the other guardian guilds have in this position are quire a lot better. This would be trueheal, archlich, and fleshmound. I do not think spire needs to be put at the level of trueheal or archlich, but even fleshmound generates flesh (it doesn't require you to drain massive amounts of your personal power into the spire), and it allows the owner to ressurrect someone from anywhere for 50 flesh, so it has use outside of the small area. Given Iytha's complaints about just how much flesh they have, this is a very cheap ability. 0 R: 0 Solution #1: Change spire to be created using 10 of a single type of charged crystal and the type of crystal grants a specific benefit as outlined below. Touching the spire will cost 10 power, and the defense will last until death/logout. Amethyst: +1 constitution, +1 intelligence weighted Beryl: Flight, level 1 regeneration outdoors Bloodstone: +10% damage Diamond: +1 constitution, +1 dexterity weighted Emerald: +1 sip balance Garnet: +2 charisma weighted Jade:+2 intelligence weighted Onyx: +1 intelligence, +1 dexterity weighted Opal: +1 influencing all types Ruby: A chance to deliver a small amount of timewarp upon taking damage Sapphire: +1 intelligence, +1 charisma weighted Turquoise: 10% DMP Player Comments: ---on 10/14 @ 23:32 writes: I am willing to discuss the effects of the gems if anyone feels anything is particularly overpowered, If any of the stats don't have weighted listed after them that is an oversight, all the stat increases should be weighted. I spent a lot of time fleshing out these effects with the envoys around at the time though so I think they are pretty fair in general. ---on 10/18 @ 05:09 writes: I don't necessarily agree with the suggested abilities, but spire is very underwhelming. Using power makes it inherently worse off then fleshmounds, and it has less use. I would suggest that the Illum envoy or someone else addresses fleshmounds in a separate report to bring them up to the level of spire as proposed in this report. ---on 10/18 @ 10:51 writes: How much power does the spire regenerate at 75% power? Because when I leave the fleshmound at 75 flesh, it will regenerate back up to full once the month passes, I believe the spire will do the same, so that part isn't such a bad deal, IMO. I don't agree that completely changing spire is needed, but I think many of its aspects can be buffed, including the doubled hp/mp/ego thing. Perhaps that can be extended to the entirety of continuum (through a command which costs power) for x minutes doable only once every IC day, and then if you want to see it gets some use outside of continuum, allow this to happen on adjacent planes (elemental/astral) for half the time of x for the same amount of power. I'd also look into buffing heartstone as well, personally/ ---on 10/19 @ 05:48 writes: I'm not sure why you'd ever want to make an Oynx/Diamond spire given that you could have an Amethyst spire instead. Is dex really worth as much as Int or Con for a researcher? Likewise, I don't see the point of Garnet, given that Opal would give a much better influencing bonus and outside of that Cha isn't worth much for guardians. The general idea is interesting, I suppose, but it could use some polish. || Spire currently seems to produce 0.04 power per stored power per month, which is a bit lacklustre. By comparison, fleshmounds produce 0.3333 flesh per stored flesh per month. Power is much more useful than flesh/gems, of course, but I wouldn't say that it's 8 times as useful. Gaudi gets 1 power per 10 flesh or thereabouts, so I'd recomend bumping spire up to 0.1 power per stored power per month as Solution 2. That means that if you keep 90 power in the spire, you get 10 per month. But even 10p per month is pretty meh. ---on 10/19 @ 15:53 writes: I put the dexterity option in because it's something people might not think about but is actually quite useful to a defensive class, I don't understand saying Garnet is useful, as the plus charisma would help with debating as well, and max ego against telepaths. I'd much rather have charisma than a bonus to influencing as it does more and is more useful in more situations. To address the other concerns, Spire generates very little power (at about 90 power it seems to generate around 4 a month, it seems to increase linearly and the fact that dying within the range of the spire costs 25 power (at least 6 months of passive spire regeneration) it's just not worth it to keep power in it since one death will negate a lot of power, and it's cheaper just to let it get destroyed and put it back up. I considered ways to change the existing spire but the H/M/E bonuses are too powerful considering the defensive nature of the class. The class fairly intentionally has very low DMP and is weak to damage or stat kills, and extending the spire to additional ranges would just push them beyond reasonable levels of defense capabilities. I believe the solutions proposed are a more moderate solution that wouldn't disbalance the class, would allow for a bit better specialization for the class (which doesn't really exist in the institute beyond weapon choice), and would bring their power costs upon defing up more in line with other guilds. I believe that with these proposed solutions you will see a lot of people using very different buffs (which I think is the goal in any choice skill, making the choice difficult and not one of them being obviously better). However, I would still consider changes and if this report is goign to get rejected just because of a few solutions I'd really like the opportunity to discuss it with someone first ---on 10/23 @ 16:06 writes: How easy is it to change the spire from one type to another? The solutions don't seem too bad on the whole, unless it's really easy to convert it at which point you can mix and match at will for little cost (10 gems). ---on 10/23 @ 20:40 writes: If it works like fleshmound, you can't make a new one until the old one decays, which takes a minimum of 1 IC year. ---on 10/24 @ 17:03 writes: My suggestion would be that creating a new spire cost 10 power, and then an addition 10 power to get the buff, and creating a new spire gets rid of your old buff